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WOBURN -- Parents say it started with promises of basketball and pizza and ended with an unexpected full-body baptism.
State prosecutors and police in five communities are reviewing complaints that members of the Anchor Baptist Church enticed teen-agers onto buses on at least two occasions. The state Department of Social Services has said an 8-year-old boy was emotionally harmed in one of the incidents.
Police said the allegations involve hundreds of children from Woburn, Medford, Stoneham, Cambridge and Somerville.
Parents complained that the church interested the children, mostly from public housing projects, by promising in brightly colored fliers that they'd be fed unlimited pizza and soda and play in a basketball tournament.
"They didn't tell us about Mass or anything," said Rosa Vazquez, 14, who attended the service with a friend. "They just told us about the good stuff."
Instead of getting pizza, they were brought to the church, made to sit through a lengthy service, then told to undress and put on robes. Finally, those who complied were quickly dunked into a tank of water. It is unclear how many children were baptized, and whether some parents signed permission slips for the trips, police said.
The Middlesex District Attorney is reviewing allegations from three of the communities to determine whether any laws were broken, spokeswoman Jill Reilly said yesterday.
No one responded in phone or in person at the white wooden church near Woburn Square yesterday. Telephone messages left for its pastor, the Rev. Chris Pledger, were not returned.
Rev. Pledger last month defended the practice in an interview with the Woburn Advocate. He said his work had been misunderstood.
"Jesus told us to go into the world and preach the gospel. Baptism is doing more than just hearing what the man said and if it's in the Bible, who am I to say what is right?" he said.
Woburn police said they had spoken with Rev. Pledger early in response to parental complaints, but he had not returned follow-up calls. Officer Paul Lucero said Rev. Pledger had been told that he had been going about baptizing the children improperly.
"He agreed that he would change some of his methods," Officer Lucero said.
Lisa Amorin, whose 3-year-old son, Steven, had been repeatedly approached while playing outside, said the church had taken advantage of children from poorer neighborhoods.
"Families around here are lucky to get pizza once a month," she said, "so if they offer it to kids, they go."
Twelve-year-old Hieu Nguyen, whose family members are practicing Buddhists, said he and his 9-year-old brother, Qui, were baptized.
"We had to go into this bathroom. We had to take off all our clothes and put on this plastic thing," like a robe, he said. "Then we had to go into this room and they held our nose and put us in the water."
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